MEMORIAL 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 










t^^uuyt/. 



MEMORIAL 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 



FROM THE 



CITY OF BOSTON. 



"It remains for us to devote ourselves to liberty, and the welfare of others, with the generous 
willingness to be and to do towards others as we would have others do to us." 

"As a sane man, a Christian man, and a lover of my country, I am willing to be judged by 
posterity." 

Wendell Phillips. 





15 S T N : 
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 



MDCCCI. XXXIV. 






PRESS OF 




*ROCK WELLS 



CHURCHILL* 



BOSTON. 



CITY OF BOSTON. 



In Board of Aldermen, April 25, 1884. 

Ordered, That the Clerk of Committees be authorized, under the direction of 
the Committee on Printing, to prepare for publication the proceedings of the City 
Council upon the death of Wendell Phillips, together with the address upon 
his life and character delivered before the City Authorities, the L8th instant, l>y 
George William Curtis; that five thousand copies be issued, each member 
to receive fifty copies, the expense thereby incurred to be charged to the appro- 
priation for Incidentals. 

Passed in Common Council. 
Came up for concurrence. Concurred. 
Approved by the Mayor, April 26, 1884. 
A true copy. 

Attest: JOHN T. PR I F.ST, 

Assistant City Cleric. 



CONTENTS 



&Hc 



Action of the City Government 

Death of Wendell Phillips 

Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen 
Resolutions of the City Council 
Remarks of Alderman Curtis 
Remarks of Alderman Hall 
Remarks of Alderman Hersey . 
Action relative to attending funeral . 

Proceedings of the Common Council 
Remarks of Henry Parkman 
Remarks of William Taylor, Jr. 
Remarks of Harvey X. Collison 
Action relative' to attending funeral . 
Committee of Arrangements 
.Mayor authorized to procure a portrait 
Committee on Memorial Services 

Memorial Services .... 
Prayer by Rev. Minot .1. Savage 
Address of the Mayor 
Poem by Mrs. Mary E. Blake . 

Eulogy by George William Curtis . 

1'is m Proceedings .... 



Page 
11 
11 

11-14 
11 
12 

12, 13 
11 
14 
1 1 

15, 16 
16 
17 
17 
17 
IS 

24 26 
30 

2i ; 
:;:, 65 



ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 



DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



The death of Wendell Phillips occurred on Saturday even- 
ing, at quarter past six o'clock, February 2, 1884. Symptoms of 
the disease which terminated his life had been manifest for a year 
or more, but were not so serious as to cause apprehension. An 
acute form, however, developed itself on Friday, the twenty- 
fifth of January, and he became gradually worse, during the 
following week, until Saturday, when the fatal result took 
place. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN. 

At the meeting of the Board of Aldermen, Monday, February 
4th, Alderman Hall offered the following resolve and order : — 

Resolved, That the City Council of Boston receives 
with profound regret the sad intelligence of the death of 
Wendell, Phillips, one of Boston's most distinguished 
sons, whose unflinching devotion to the cause of human 
liberty, and uncompromising advocacy of the rights of the 
l^oor and oppressed of every race, creed, and color, entitle 
him to a most prominent position among the illustrious 
men of our times. 

Ordered, That the Chairman and one member of this 
Board, with such as the Common Council may join, be a 

(ii) 



12 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

committee to represent the City Council at the funeral of 
Mr. Phillips. 

Alderman Curtis said : — 

I rise for the purpose of seconding the resolution. 
As it states, we have lost a distinguished citizen of 
Boston. He was a man of great mind, and possessed in- 
domitable perseverance. When he was about twenty-five 
years old, as we all know, he stopped the practice of his 
profession, and took up the cause of the oppressed slave. 
He advocated that cause until the slaves were liberated, 
and from that time until his death he never ceased to ad- 
vocate the cause of the poor and oppressed. In his death 
the poor of Boston have lost one of the best friends they 
ever had. He was always ready to serve his fellow-citi- 
zens. He had a kind heart as well as a great mind. 
"When we lose a man of that stamp it always makes me 
feel that a great gap has been opened in the community. 
When the question is taken I hope it will be by a rising 
vote. 

Alderman Hall said : — 

I present this resolution, Mr. Chairman, in profound re- 
spect for a man who had the courage of his convictions, 
and whose example in that respect I wish had been fol- 
lowed by all men everywhere, whose voices have gone 
before us, and who have made their mark in this world. 
In 1836, when Mr. Lovejoy had been murdered by a mob 
in Illinois, Mr. Phillips made his first great effort in Fan- 
euil Hall. He stood there, a young man, pleading for 



ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 13 

human rights and human liberty, speaking as fearlessly 
and eloquently as if he had been of more mature years. 
From that time to his death he was ever the champion of 
the cause of freedom everywhere. He lias spoken for the 
poor and oppressed in all countries. The money of the 
rulers of England never daunted him; but he fearlessly 
stood and spoke in behalf of the oppressed of the Green 
Isle. Everywhere, and upon all occasions, has his voice 
been raised in the interest of human rights. While I 
mourn his loss, and bow with profound sorrow at it, 
I feel happy to think that it is my lot to speak one word 
in honor of him who, from boyhood to a ripe old age, 
defended the rights of those who were oppressed by the 
rich and powerful of this world. Mr. Phillips did not 
outlive his usefulness. His philanthropic efforts continued 
to be exerted, and his intellect was unimpaired, during 
the last years of his life. One of his most scholarly and 
eloquent efforts was made some two years ago in the 
celebrated oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 
which he used these memorable words : — 



"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on tin' throne; 
Vei that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 



I hope this Board will attend his funeral, either indi- 
vidually or as a committee of the whole, and pay their 
tribute of respect, not only to the deceased, but to the 
cause he espoused, and I believe that good will come 
from our having followed him to his last resting:- 
place. 



14 MEMORIAL Or WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Alderman Heksey said : — 

I believe the City Government of Boston should take 
recognition of the death of "Wendell Phillips, one of our 
most able and philanthropic citizens. I am happy to 
second the adoption of the resolution, and move, as an 
amendment, that the Board attend the funeral as a com- 
mittee of the whole. 

Alderman Hall accepted the suggestion, and the order was 
amended accordingly. 

The resolve and order as amended were passed by a unanimous 
rising vote. 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMON COUNCIL. 

A special meeting of the Common Council was held on Tues- 
day, February 5, at 2 o'clock P.M., in response to the following 
message frorn His Honor the Mayor : — 



City of Boston, 

Executive Depaktment, 

February 4, 1884. 

To the Honorable Common Council of the City of 
Boston : — 

In conformity with an order passed this day in the 
Board of Aldermen, you are hereby requested to assemble 
in the Council Chamber to-morrow, Tuesday, the 5th 



ACTION OE THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 15 

inst., at two o'clock P.M., to take such action in regard 
to attending the funeral of our late illustrious fellow-citi- 
zen, Wendell Phillips, as may harmonize with the 
action of the Board. 

AUGUSTUS P. MAKTIN. 

Mayor. 

The members were culled to order by the President, John II. 
Lee, Esq. 

The resolution and order adopted by the Board of Aldermen 
were read twice, and the question was upon their passage. 

Mr. Parkman, of Ward 9, said : — 

I believe, Mr. President, that this is one of the rare oc- 
casions when the City Government has been prompted to 
take official notice of the death of one of its citizens who 
has never held an official position either in the city, State, 
or nation. Rarely, if ever, has one who was foremost in 
so many agitations, and who has championed so many 
causes, not been forced to accept some public office where 
he might carry into effect the views for which he has 
labored. Perhaps he felt that his best work lav in the 
agitation of great public questions; in obliging people to 
think abontthe questions which he forced to their attention 
by his matchless gifts. His fearlessness in the expression 
of his opinions, and his pronounced views, always aroused 
active opposition. One class of fellow-citizens mobbed 
him for his views on the slavery question, while in later 
days his views on the money question, or on the use of 
the federal power in the Southern Slates, have aroused 
almost as lively an opposition from others, though not 



16 MEMORIAL OE WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

manifested in a similar way. But now that he has passed 
away, and as we look upon his life as a whole, the very 
many-sidedness of his character, the different causes 
which he has advocated, have appealed to every one of our 
fellow-citizens. All opposition has ceased. We forget 
where we have differed, we remember only where we have 
agreed with him, and we can all unite in paying our last 
tribute to one who has occupied so prominent a position 
among us. We shall remember the power of his oratory 
which charmed us and held our attention spellbound 
even while we differed with his sentiments. Our children 
will read his speeches, and we shall point to him as one 
who courted not the popular applause, but who advocated 
what he believed was right. 

I move, Mr. Chairman, that when the vote is taken 
upon this resolution it be by a standing vote; and that a 
committee of twelve on the part of this body be joined to 
the committee of the Board of Aldermen to attend the 
funeral of our illustrious townsman. 

Mr. Taylor, of Ward 8, said : — 

As one of the younger members of the Council I wish 
to add my tribute to the memory of the departed. The 
people, sir, whom I have the honor in part to represent 
have spoken their eulogy by sincere manifestations of 
sorrow and regret. It is with the same feeling that he 
enkindled within me, and by which he won my admira- 
tion in earlier days for him as a man and as a citizen of 
my native city, that I humbly desire to offer my tribute at 
this time. I second the motion of the gentleman from 
Ward 9. 



ACTIOX OF TIIK CITY GOVERN MKXT. 17 

Mr. Collison, of Ward 6, said : — 

I think that the eloquent remarks of the gentleman 
from Ward 9 and the remarks of the gentleman from 
Ward 8 have covered the ground entirely, and now is the 
time for no eulogy upon the dead. We all knew him 
personally; we all knew his gifts and his power, his hon- 
esty and his great, manly heart, and his sympathy for 
suffering everywhere and in every form. 1 agree, Mr. 
President, that this Council should in some form take 
official cognizance of the death of our great fellow-citizen; 
but I believe that Ave should go still further, and manifest 
our admiration for the man by voting to attend the 
funeral in a body. The Hoard of Aldermen has voted to 
attend in a body, and I think it would be well becoming 
and fitting- if this Council also should attend in a body. 
Therefore, Mr. President, I move, as an amendment to the 
motion of the Councilman from Ward 0, that the Council 
attend in a body. 



The first question was upon the passage of the order, and it was 
passed by a unanimous vote. 

The question was then upon tin 1 amendment offered by Mr. 
Collison, of Ward 6, that the Council attend the funeral in a body, 
and the amendment was adopted. 

On motion of Mr. I'akkmw, of Ward '.). it was voted that a 
committee of live be appointed to make the necessary arrange- 
ments; and the ('hair appointed as such committee, Messrs. 
Denney, of Ward 12: Parkman, of Ward !• : Fraser, of Ward 6; 
Blume, of Ward 11 ; and Donovan, of Ward .*>. 



18 MEMORIAL OP WE^TDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. O'Flynn, of Ward 19, offered the following order : — 

That His Honor the Mayor be authorized to procure a 
true picture of Wendell Phillips, and have it placed in 
a conspicuous place in Faneuil Hall, the style of the same 
to be left to the good taste of His Honor; the cost to be 
taken from the fund for Incidental Expenses. 



The order was passed at a subsequent meeting of the Common 
Council, and concurred in by the Board of Aldermen. 

On motion of Mr. Murphy, of Ward 3, the Council adjourned. 



The following orders were passed by the City Council : — 

City of Boston, 

In Common Council, 

February 7, 1884. 

Ordered, That the President of this Council and five 
others, on the part of this Council, together with the 
Chairman of the Board of Aldermen and such as the 
Board of Aldermen may join, be a committee to make 
suitable arrangements for a eulogy upon the life of 
Wendell Phillips; the expenses thereof, not exceeding 
five hundred dollars, to be charged to the appropriation 
\\)Y Incidentals. 

Or</< red, That His Honor the Mayor be requested to 
act with such committee. 



ACTION OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT. 19 

Passed, under a suspension of the rules ■ yeas, 60 ; Days, ; and 
Messrs. Parkman, Donovan, Denney, Blumc, and Fraser were 
appointed on said committee. 

Sent up for concurrence. 

JOIIX II. LEE, 

Prosit I ( nf. 



In Board of Aldermen, 

Feb. 11, 1884. 
Concurred unanimously, and the Chairman and Aldermen 
Horsey, McDonald, and Nugent were joined. 

C. V. WRITTEN, 

Chairman. 



Approved, Feb. 12, 1884. 

A. J'. MARTIN, 

Mayor 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 



The Special Committee of the City Council having charge of 
the arrangements for the memorial service in honor of Wendell 
Phillips, selected the eighteenth of April as the day upon 
which the services should be held. 

Mr. George William Cruris, for many years an intimate 
friend of the deceased, was invited to pronounce the eulogy, and 
accepted the invitation. 

The Tremont Temple Association tendered to the City the free 
use of their hall for the occasion, and their offer was accepted. 

Official invitations to attend the services were extended to His 
Excellency the Governor, and the members of his staff; the Ex- 
ecutive Council; Heads of State Departments; United States 
Officers; the Judges of the Supreme, Superior, and Municipal 
Courts; past Mayors of Boston; City Officers, and heads of 
departments. 

At three o'clock the services were opened with a voluntary on 
the organ, by Mr. Howard M. Dow. The following song was 
then sung by the Temple Quartette: — 

LOYAL TO THE END. 

Freedom dwells throughout our own beloved land; up to heaven its yoice 

is swelling. 
From the mountain heights afar to ocean strand every breeze is telling. 
Never weary of the ever-joyous song, 
Heart and voice united bear along. 
Loyal to the end ! 
Ready to defend ! 
Foe within and out repelling. 

(23) 



24 MEMORIAL OF WEXDELL PHILLIPS. 

War's alarum rolled a hundred years ago o'er the peaceful scenes around 

us ; 
Where our patriot fathers struck a mortal blow at the haughty power that 
bound us. 

Now from North to South together e'er Ave stand, 
Dwellers in a free and mighty land. 
Loyal to the end ! 
Heady to defend ! 
"What their gloried valor found us. 

Freedom dwells throughout our own beloved land; wide as heaven arches 

o'er it. 
Like the rising sun, the patriot's armed hand swept the clouds of wrong 
before it. 

Sound aloud the joyous word from crag to crag. 
Plant on every peak our starry flag. 
Loyal to the end ! 
Ready to defend ! 
Guard and like a shrine adore it. 

The Mayor then asked the attention of the assembly, while 
prayer was offered by the Reverend Minot J. Savage : — 

O GOD, in all ages and in all lands, Thy children 
have lifted, up their hands' towards the heavens, if by 
any means they might feel after and. find Thee, though 
trusting that Thou hast been very near to all of us; and 
yet in all these ages no man hath seen Thee, no man 
hath heard Thy voice, no man hath touched Thee. We 
have felt before us and behind us and around us, but 
Thou hast been ever the intangible and invisible One. 
And } T ct we have always been confident that Thou Avert 
nearer to us than the air we breathe, nearer to us than 
the thoughts we think, nearer to us than the aspirations 
that lift us up toward Thee. And in all these ages 
while we have sought to find Thee and spell out at least 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 25 

some syllabic of Thy name, we are glad and thankful 

that Thou hast never left the world withoul a witness. 

Though Thou hast been hidden behind the phenomena 

of nature which have been Thy garment, hiding and at 

the same time revealing Thee, there has always been 

some hero-man consecrated to truth, faithful to his time, 

and loving his fellow-men, — some one who has stood 

up to speak for Thee, to be Thy voice to the heart and 

conscience of the race. Some have studied Thy truth 

in nature, and given us the results of their investigation-. 

Others have caught glimpses of Thine ineffable beauty, 

and have given it to us shaped in marble or outlined 

upon canvas. And others have been Thy prophets, 

who, when the age was sluggish and had forgotten the 

higher law, questioning whether there were any God in 

the heavens or any eternal right upon earth, have stood 

up to speak for Thee and rouse the conscience and the 

heart of the world. And we are here to-day t<> celebrate 

one of these Thy true prophets, who spoke to a nation 

for Thee; who, though outcast and neglected long, at 

last was heard, because he uttered the eternal voice of 

God's eternal truth, that voice that never returns unto 

Thee void, but accomplishes that whereto Thou dosl 

send it. Our fathers long did east him out; but we the 

children — as has been done so many times in the past 

— are come to build his monument, — a monument of 

noble words to-day, — a monument of stone by and by. 

]S\)w we pra} r that we may build a monument of deeds 

nobler than either of these; for shall we not commemorate 

him best by having the same divine spirit, the same love 

for humanity, in our hearts that was in his, by going 



26 MEMORIAL OP WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

on and finishing the work which he began? Let us not 
be content until humanity is redeemed, until the poor 
are lifted up, the ignorant enlightened, until every chain 
is broken, and all ugliness is transformed into the divine 
beauty. And when we have accomplished this, the 
dream of the ages shall have been realized, the Desire 
of all nations shall have come, and the kingdom of God, 
which is the true kingdom of man, shall have descended 
from on high to abide with us here on the earth. Amen. 

The following hymn, composed for the occasion by Rev. M. 
J. Savage, was then sung by the quartette : — 

TRUTH. 

No power on earth shall sever 
My soul from Truth forever; 
In whate'er path she wander, 
I'll follow my commander. 
All hail ! all hail ! beloved Truth ! 

Whate'er the foe before me, 
Where'er her flag flies o'er me, 
Til stand and never falter: 
No bribe my faith shall alter. 
Lead on ! lead on ! thou mighty Truth ! 

And when the fight is over, 
Look down upon thy lover; 
He asks for well-done duly, 
To see thy heavenly beauty; 
Reveal thy lace, celestial Truth! 

Then followed the memorial poem, written by Mrs. Mary E. 
Blake in response to an invitation from the committee. The 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 27 

poem was read in a pleasing manner by Miss Belle Cushman 
Eaton, introduced to the audience, by the .Mayor, as the grand- 
niece of Charlotte Cushman. 

POEM. 

Glory, not grief, our theme to-day! 

The paean of his life to sing 
Who brought, to clothe our common clay, 

The royal mantle of the king. 
Glory, not grief! The heart is cold 

That drinks of sorrow's bitter cup, 
When, like the prophet saint of old, 

God's fiery steeds bear heroes up. 

Some tombs are altars. On them Same 

The beacon-lights of sacrifice, 
Like stars fair set in skies of fame 

To light the way for seeking r. 
Beside them lie the conqueror's 

The patriot's sword, the poet's pen, — 
Like kindling sparks to set ablaze 

The lire divine in hearts of men. 

Round thy dear name, thou mosl blessed, 

Because most loved! what memories throng, 
Now that thy virtues stand confessed, 

By death's pale light made doubly strong! 
Thou Bayard of our craven age, 

When even honor stoops to greed, 
ILnv white tin' fair, unsullied page 

Thy record leaves for men to read! 

Born in the purple, placed beyond 

The rare-; that lowlier fortune hears, 
What wiser insight, grave and fond. 

Led thee to mate thy life with theii ; 
Thy soul was like an angel's wing 

To stir the troubled pool of d >ubt, 
Till Bondage, bathing in the spring, 



28 MEMORIAL OF WEKDELL PHILLIPS. 

Twofold thj- nature : one was shown 

To those oppressed of creed or race, 
Who knew thy tenderness alone — 

"Who saw the Saviour in thy face; 
While one, in stern and awful guise, 

Confronted the embattled throng, 
And with the lightning of thine eyes 

Struck down the armored might of Wrong. 

If, sometime, on the upward track, 

When frosty peril nipped the soul, 
And Prudence called her warriors back, 

Thy braver spirit stormed the goal, 
Smote giant Danger branch and root, 

And spurred thy lagging comrades on, — 
Shall we, who share the victory's fruit, 

Dare question how the heights were Avon? 

The winged arrows of thy speech, 

Barbed with sharp points of finest scorn, 
That tore their way through gap and breach, 

And forced a path for hopes forlorn; 
The broken fetter of the slave, 

The right of manhood to be free, — 
What nobler signs could make thy grave 

A sacred shrine to Liberty? 

On thy dead brow we place the crown, 

For words made living by thy breath ; 
For fearless thought, for high renown 

Of conquest from the jaws of death ; 
For this is Fame! But to thy bier 

Come gifts all other gifts above, — 
The freedman's prayer, the poor man's tear, 

A Nation's stricken cry of love ! 



The following ode, written especially for the occasion by 
Rev. M. J. Savage, was then sung by a select choir of ladies and 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 29 

gentlemen; the tune being the familiar one of "Glory, Hallelu- 
jah," and the audience joining in the chorus : — 

HUMANITY'S HERO. 

When the rights of man lead forward, then the hero turns not back, 
Though beneath the scaffold's shadow looms the torture of the rack ! 
While truth's angel flits before him, fearless following her track, 

He still goes marching on ! 

Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 

The people rise and follow, though they march o'er many a grave, 
For his high example thrills them, and the coward heart turns brave 
As each broken shackle, falling, shows a man for every slave, 

As they go marching on ! 

Glory, etc. 

Crouching in the age-long shadow, blinded by her lingering night, 
Woman rises to her feet at last, and hails the coming light, 
Echoing back with feeble voice the hero's shout of woman's right, 

As he comes marching on! 

Glory, etc. 

Labor deafened by the factory 1mm, or bent above the soil, 

Losing manhood's heart and manhood's hope in weary drudge and moil, 

Sees the better day ahead of honest wage for honest toil, 

As man goes marching on ! 

Glory, etc. 

The oppressed of eveiy nation, looking out across the sea, 

Catch the faint and far-off echo of the time that is to be, 

When each man shall own his manhood, and each hand and brain be free, 

As truth goes marching on! 

Glory, etc. 

Then shout aloud the hero's name with glad, exultant voice — 

All heroes who, like Piin.i.ii'S, have made manhood's right their choice, 

And as we shout we'll follow, and while following rejoice, 

And all go marching on, 

Glory, etc. 



30 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His Honor Mayor Martin next introduced the orator of the 
day, in the following words : — 

Ladies a^d Gentlemen : While great men live, the 
very qualities that make them great necessarily divide the 
people into parties, creating bitter opponents, as well as 
enthusiastic followers. But when one of them dies, 
the land that gave him birth adds one more to her grow- 
ing list of heroes. She is then anxious to see him in his 
true proportions, and assign him his appropriate niche in 
her temple of fame. She seeks to comprehend the spirit 
by which he was animated, and. to estimate the result of 
his life-work, so that her children may have one more 
example to stimulate them to heroic deeds. 

To attempt to recount the vicissitudes of any life, to 
delineate any character, and to say how large a part of 
the results of a great national forward movement are due 
to the efforts of any one man is, indeed, a delicate and diffi- 
cult task. How much more so when that man did not fight 
battles or frame acts of legislation; but, by the diffusive 
power of an almost matchless eloquence, created those 
mental and moral conditions out of which battles and 
legislation spring! These influences are almost as intan- 
gible and untraceable as are the effects of sunlight and 
tempest and air, which yet produce the grasses, the bud- 
ding leaves, and the flowers of spring. 

We are, therefore, singularly fortunate to-day in the 
man who has been chosen to give form and color to our 
indefinite feeling and thought. He is a gentleman fitted 
to speak by a life-long personal friendship, and by a 
hearty sympathy with the great underlying principles 



MEMORIAL SERVICES. 31 

and general aims of him whom Boston, to-day, delights 
to honor, and, beyond this, lie has one more peculiar 
fitness for the task he undertakes. For, since the "silver 
tongue" is silent, perhaps there is no man left in America 
"whose rare and noble eloquence so fits him to speak in 
the stead of him whom we shall hear no more. It srives 
me, then, great pleasure to say that you will now listen 
to a portraiture of Wendell Phillips, drawn by the 
master skill of his friend, and our honored guest, 
Mr. George "William Curtis. 

Mr. Curtis whs received with a round of applause, and pro- 
ceeded to deliver his address, which occupied an hour and three 
quarters. It was listened to throughout with earnest attention, 
and was frequently interrupted by applause. 

At the conclusion of the Eulogy the audience united with the 
choir in singing " America," and an interesting feature at this 
point was the introduction, l>y the .Mayor, of Rev. S. F. Surra, 
the author of the familiar hymn. The benediction was afterwards 
pronounced by Rev. Mr. Savage, and the assembly dispersed. 



THE EULOGY, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CUKTIS. 



THE EULOGY. 



Massachusetts is always rich in fitting voices to 
commemorate the virtues and services of her illustrious 
citizens; and in every strain of affectionate admiration 
and thoughtful discrimination, the legislature, the pul- 
pit, and the press, his old associates who saw the 
glory of his prime, the younger generation which cher- 
ishes the tradition of his devoted life, have spoken the 
praise of Wendell Phillips. But his native city has 
justly thought that the great work of his life was not 
local or limited; that it was as large as liberty and as 
broad as humanity,, and that his name, therefore, is not 
the treasure of a State, only, hut a national possession. 
An orator whose consecrated eloquence, like the music 
of Amphion raising the wall of Thebes, was a chief 
force in giving to the American Union the impregnable 
defence of freedom, is a common benefactor. The West 
may well answer to the East, the South to the North, 
and Carolina and California, Minnesota and New York, 
mingle their sorrow with that of New England, and 
own in his death a common bereavement. 

At other times, with every mournful ceremony of re- 
spect, the Commonwealth and its chief city have lamented 
their dead sons, conspicuous party leaders, who, in high 

(35) 



36 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

official place, and with the formal commission of the 
State, have worthily maintained the ancient renown and 
the lofty faith of Massachusetts. But it is a private citi- 
zen whom we commemorate to-day, yet a public leader; 
a man always foremost in political controversy, but who 
held no office, and belonged to no political party; who 
swayed votes, but who seldom voted, and never for a 
mere party purpose; and who, for the larger part of his 
active life, spurned the Constitution as a bond of iniquity, 
and the Union as a yoke of oppression. Yet the official 
authority which decrees this commemoration; this great 
assembly which honors his memory; the press, which 
from sea to sea has celebrated his name; and I, who at 
your summons stand here to speak bis eulogy, — are all 
loyal to party, all revere the Constitution and maintain 
the Union, all hold the ballot to be the most sacred trust, 
and voting to be the highest duty of the citizen. As we 
recall the story of that life, the spectacle of to-day is one 
of the most significant in our history. This memorial rite 
is not a tribute to official service, to literary genius, to 
scientific distinction; it is homage to personal character. 
It is the solemn public declaration that a life of tran- 
scendent purity of purpose, blended with commanding 
powers, devoted with absolute unselfishness, and with 
amazing results, to the welfare of the country and of 
humanity, is, in the American republic, an example so 
inspiring, a patriotism so lofty, and a public service so 
beneficent, that, in contemplating them, discordant 
opinions, differing judgments, and the sharp sting of 
controversial speech, vanish like frost in a Hood of sun- 
shine. It is not the Samuel Adams who was impatient 



THE EULOGY. ."57 

of Washington, and who doubted the Constitution, but 
the Samuel Adam- of Faneuil Hall, of the Committee of 
Correspondence, of Concord and Lexington, — Samuel 
Adams, the father of the Revolution, — whom Massachu- 
setts and America remember and revere. 

The revolutionary tradition was the native air of 
Wendell Phillips. When he was born in this city, sev- 
enty-three years ago last November, some of the chief 
revolutionary figures still lingered. John Adam- was 
living at Quincy, and Thomas Jefferson ai Monticello; 
Elbridge Gerry was Governor of the State, James Madi- 
son was President, and the second war with England 
was at hand. Phillips was nine years old when, in L820, 
the most important debate after the adoption of the 
Constitution, — the debate of whose tumultuous cul- 
mination and triumphant close he was to be the greal 
orator, — began, and the second heroic epoch of our his- 
tory, in which he was a master figure, opened in the long 
and threatening contest over the admission of Missouri. 
Unheeding the transactions which were shaking the land 
and setting the scene of his career, the young boy, of the 
best New England lineage and prospects, played upon 
Beacon Hill, and at the age of sixteen entered Harvard 
College. His classmates recall his manly pride and 
reserve, with the charming manner, the delightful con- 
versation, and the affluence of kindly humor, which was 
never lost. He sauntered and gently studied; not a 
devoted student; not in tin' bent of his mind, nor in the 
special direction of sympathy, forecasting the reformer, 
but already the orator and the easy master of the college 
platform; and still, in the memory of his old companion-. 



38 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he walks those college paths in unfading youth, a figure 
of patrician port, of sovereign grace, — a prince coming 
to his kingdom. 

The tranquil years at the university ended, and he 
graduated in 1831, the year of Nat. Turner's insurrection 
in Virginia ; the year, also, in which Mr. G arrison issued the 
"Liberator," and, for unequivocally proclaiming the prin- 
ciple of the Declaration of Independence was denounced 
as a public enemy. Like other gently nurtured Boston 
boys Phillips began the study of law, and, as it pro- 
ceeded, doubtless the sirens sang to him, as to the noble 
youth of every country and time. If, musing over Coke 
and Blackstone, in the full consciousness of ample powers 
and of fortunate opportunities, he sometimes forecast 
the future, he doubtless saw himself succeeding Fisher 
Ames, and Harrison Gray Otis, and Daniel Webster, 
rising from the Bar to the Legislature, from the Legis- 
lature to the Senate, from the Senate — who knew 
whither? — the idol of society, the applauded orator, the 
brilliant champion of the elegant repose and the culti- 
vated conservatism of Massachusetts. The delight of 
social ease, the refined enjoyment of taste in letters and 
art, opulent leisure, professional distinction, gratified 
ambition, — all these came and whispered to the young 
student. And it is the force that can tranquilly put aside 
such blandishments with a smile, and aeeept alienation, 
outlawry, ignominy, and apparent defeat, if need be, no 
less than the courage which grapples with poverty and 
outward hardship, and climbs over them to worldly pros- 
perity, which is the tesl of the finest manhood. Only he 



THE EUIiOGT. 39 

who fully knows the worth of what he renounces gains 
the true blessing of renunciation. 

The time during which Phillips was studying law was 
the hour of the profoundest moral apathy in the history of 
this country. The fervor of revolutionary feeling was 
long since spent, and that of the final anti-slavery contest 
was just kindled. The question of slavery, indeed, had 
been quite forgotten. There was always an anti-slavery 
sentiment in the country, but there was also a slavery in- 
terest, and the invention of the cotton-gin in 178!) gave 
slavery the most powerful and insidious impulse that it 
had ever received. At once commercial greed was allied 
with political advantage and social power, and the active 
anti-slavery sentiment rapidly declined. Ten years after 
the invention of the cotton-gin, the General Convention 
of the Abolition Societies deplored the decay of public 
interest in emancipation. Forty years later, in L833, 
while Phillips was still studying law, the veteran Penn- 
sylvania Society lamented that since 1794: it had seen one 
after another of those societies disband, until it was left 
almost alone to mourn the universal apathy. When 
Wendell Phillips was admitted to the bar, in 183-1, the 
slave interest in the United States, entrenched in the 
Constitution, in trade, in the church, in society, in historic 
tradition, and in the prejudice of race, had already 
become, although unconsciously to the country, one of the 
most powerful forces in the world. The English throne 
in 1625, the old French monarchy in 1780, the English 
aristocracy at the beginning of the century, were not so 
strong as slavery in this country fifty years ago. The 
grasp of England upon the American colonic- before the 



40 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Revolution was not so sure, and was never so menacing 
to liberty upon this continent, as the grasp of slavery 
upon the Union in the pleasant days when the young 
lawyer sat in his office, careless of the anti-slavery agita- 
tion, and jesting with his old college comrades over the 
clients who did not come. 

But on an October afternoon in 1835, while he was still 
sitting expectant in his office, the long-awaited client 
came; but in what an amazing form! The young lawyer 
was especially a Boston boy. He loved his native city 
with that lofty pride and intensity of local affection which 
are peculiar to her citizens. "I was born in Boston," he 
said long afterward, " and the good name of the old town 
is bound up with every fibre of my heart." In the mild 
afternoon his windows were open, and the sound of un- 
usual disturbance drew him from his office. He hastened 
along the street, and suddenly, a stone's-throw from the 
scene of the Boston Massacre, in the very shadow of 
the Old State-House, he beheld in Boston a spectacle 
which Boston cannot now conceive. He saw American 
women insulted for befriending their innocent sisters, 
whose children were sold from their arms. He saw an 
American citizen assailed by a furious mob in the city of 
James Otis, for saying, with James Otis, that a man's 
right to liberty is inherent and inalienable. Himself a 
citizen soldier, he looked to see the majesty of the people 
maintaining the authority of law; but, to his own 
startled surprise, he saw that the rightful defenders of 
law against the mob were themselves the mob. The city 
whose dauntless free speech had taught a country how to 
be independent he saw raising a parricidal hand against 



THE EULOGY. 41 

its parent — Liberty. It was enough. As the jail <l i >rs 
closed upon Garrison to save his life, Grarrison and his 
cause had won their most powerful and renowned ally. 
With the setting of that October sun vanished forever the 
career of prosperous ease, the gratification of ordinary 
ambition, which the genius and the accomplishment of 
Wendell Phillips had seemed to foretell. Yes, the long- 
awaited client had come at last. Scarred, scorned, and 
forsaken, that cowering" and friendless clienl was wronged 
and degraded humanity. The great soul saw and under- 
stood. 

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers Low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, i" can." 

Already the Boston boy felt what he afterwards said: 
K I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston, over which 
my mother led my baby feet; and if God grants me time 
enough I will make them too pure for the footsteps of a 
slave." And we, fellow-citizens, who recall the life and 
the man, the untiring sacrifice, the complete surrender, do 
we not hear in the soft air of that long-vamshed ( October 
dav, far above the riot of the stormy street, the benedic- 
tion that he could not hear, but whose influence breathed 
always from the ineffable sweetness of his smile and the 
gracious courtesy of his manner, " Inasmuch as thou hast 
done it to the least of these my brethren, thou hast done 
it unto me "? 

The scene of that day is an illustration of the time. 
As we look hack upon it. it is incredible. Bui it was uot 
until Lovejoy fell, while defending his press at Alton, in 



42 MEMORIAL OF WEXDELL PHILLIPS. 

November, 1837, that an American citizen was killed by 
a raging mob for declaring, in a free State, the right of 
innocent men and women to their personal liberty. This 
tragedy, like the deadly blow at Charles Simmer in the 
Senate Chamber, twenty years afterward, awed the whole 
country with a sense of vast and momentous peril. The 
country has just been startled by the terrible riot at Cin- 
cinnati, which sprang from the public consciousness that 
by crafty legal quibbling crime had become secure. But 
the outbreak was at once and universally condemned, be- 
cause, in this country, whatever the wrong may be, reform 
by riot is always worse than the wrong. The Alton riot, 
however, had no redeeming impulse. It was the very 
frenzy of lawlessness, a sudden and ghastly glimpse of 
the unquenchable fires of passion that were burning under 
the seeming peace and prosperity of the Union. How 
fierce and far-reaching those passions were, was seen not 
only in the riot itself, but in the refusal of Faneuil Hall 
for a public meeting to denounce the appalling wrong to 
American liberty which bad been done in Illinois, lest the 
patriotic protest of the meeting should be interpreted 
by the country as the voice of Boston. But the refusal 
was reconsidered, and never, since the people of Boston 
thronged Faneuil Hall on the day after the massacre in 
State street, had that ancient hall seen a more solemn and 
significant assembly. It was the more solemn, the more 
significant, because the excited multitude was no longer, 
as in the revolutionary day, inspired by one unanimous 
and overwhelming purpose to assert and maintain liberty 
of speech as the bulwark of all other liberty. It was an 



II 1 1 : EULOGY. I.'! 

unwonted and foreboding scene. An evil spirit was in 
the air. 

When the seemly protest against the monstrous crime 

had bom spoken, and the proper duty of the da\ was 
done, a voice was heard, — the voice of the high officer 
solemnly sworn to prosecute, in the name of Massachu- 
setts, every violation of law, declaring, in Faneuil Hall, 
sixty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, and amid a 
howling - storm of applause, that an American citizen who 
was put to death by a mad crowd of his fellow-citizens 
for defending his right of free speech, died as the fool 
dieth. Boston has seen dark days, but never a moment 
so dark as that. Seven years before, Webster had said, 
in the famous words that Massachusetts binds as frontlets 
between her eyes, ft There are Boston and Concord, and 
Lexington and Bunker I [ill, and there they will remain 
forever." Had they already vanished? Was the spirit 
of the Revolution quite extinct? In the very Cradle oi 
Liberty did no son survive to awake its slumbering 
echoes? By the grace of Grod such a son there was. 
1 Ie had come with the multitude, and he had heard with 
sympathy and approval the speeches that condemned the 
wrong; but when tin' cruel voice justified the murderers 
of Lovejoy, the heart of the young man burned within 
him. This speech, he said to himself, must be answered. 
As the malign strain proceeded, the Boston boy, all on 
fire, with Concord and Lexington tugging at his heart, 
unconsciously murmured, "Such a speech in Faneuil IEall 
must be answered in Faneuil Hall." " Why n >; answer 
it yourself?" whispered a neighbor, who overheard him. 
"Help me to the platform and T will." — and pushing and 



44 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

struggling through the dense and threatening crowd, the 
young man reached the platform, was lifted upon it, and, 
advancing to speak, was greeted with a roar of hostile 
cries. But riding the whirlwind undismayed, as for many 
a year afterward he directed the same wild storm, he 
stood upon the platform in all the heauty and grace of 
imperial youth, — the Greeks would have said a god 
descended, — and in words that touched the mind and 
heart and conscience of that vast multitude, as with fire 
from heaven, recalling Boston to herself, he saved his 
native city and her Cradle of Liberty from the damning 
disgrace of stoning the first martyr in the great struggle 
for personal freedom. "Mr. Chairman," he said, " when 
I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed 
the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton, side by 
side with Otis and Hancock, and Quincy and Adams, I 
thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice 
to rebuke the recreant American — the slanderer of the 
dead." And even as he spoke the vision was fulfilled. 
Once more its native music rang through Faneuil Hall. 
In the orator's own burning words, those pictured lips 
did break into immortal rebuke. In Wendell Phillips, 
glowing with holy indignation at the insult to America 
and to man, John Adams and James Otis, Josiah Quincy 
and Samuel Adams, though dead, yet spake. 

In the annals of American speech there had been 
no such scene since Patrick Henry's electrical warning 
to George the Third. It was that greatest of oratorical 
triumphs when a supreme emotion, a sentiment which 
is to mould a people anew, lifted the orator to adequate 
expression. Three such scenes are illustrious in our 



THE EULOGY. l.~i 

history: that of the speech of Patrick Henry at 
Williamsburg, of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall, of 
Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, — three, and there is 
no fourth. They transmit, unextinguished, the torch 
of an eloquence which lias aroused nations and changed 
the course of history, and which Webster called "noble, 
sublime, godlike action." The tremendous controversy 
indeed inspired universal eloquence. As the cause 
passed from the moral appeal of the abolitionists to 
the political action of the Liberty party, of the Con- 
science Whigs and the Free-Soil Democrats, and finally 
of the Republican party, the sound of speech, which 
in its variety and excellence had never been heard upon 
the continent, lilled the air. But supreme over it all 
was the eloquence of Phillips, as over the harmonious 
tumult of a great orchestra one clear voice, like a lark 
high poised in heaven, steadily carries the melody. 
As Demosthenes was the orator of Greece asrainsl 
Philip, and Cicero of Pome against Catiline, and John 
Pym of England against the Stuart despotism, Wendell 
Phillips was distinctively the orator, as others were the 
statesmen, of the anti-slavery cause. 

When he first spoke at Faneuil Hall some of the 
most renowned American orators were still in their 
prime. Webster and Clay were in the Senate, Choate 
at the bar, Edward Everett upon the Academic plat- 
form. From all these orators Phillips differed more 
than they differed from each other. Behind Webster 
and Everett and Clay there was always a great or- 
ganized party or an entrenched conservatism of feeling 
and opinion. They spoke accepted views. They moved 



ial I ell ?::. 

=s - and were s 

par: of 

nor a I _ fol par _ an un- 

:n pu: to achieve his ur- 

_ ~ . an- 

nounced a the 

- 

ind burned in hi- With no pa 

and d _ shed order and 

- - 

appea. foi - _ m - . and 

s 5S - >uld 

m and the 

and u:_ 

mined 

a tranqui. and a 

L He spoke, and 

- 

eal, 
I - - 

. — _ - _ - 

EIow - 

s ecstas 

— - " _ 



THE EULOGY. I , 

quence. What was heard, what was -ecu. was the form 
of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, 
the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless 
richness of illustration, with apt allusion, and happy anec- 
dote, and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, 
with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crack- 
ling epigram and limpid humor, the bright ripples thai 
play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless 
ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with 
concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of 
his conviction utterly possessed him, and his 

" Pure and eloquenl blood 
Spoke in lii> check, and so distinctly wrought, 
That our might almost say his body thought." 

Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Wa- 
it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his 
lips? Xo, no! It was an American patriot, a modern 
sou of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever 
consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the Ameri- 
can conscience for the chained and speechless victims of 
American inhumanity. 

How terribly earnest was the anti-slavery contesl this 
generation little knows. But to understand Phillip- we 
must recall the situation <>(' the country. When he joined 
the Abolitionists, and for more than twenty years after- 
ward, Slavery sat supreme in the White House, and 
made laws in the Capitol. Courts of justice were its 
ministers and legislatures its lackeys, it silenced the 
preacher in the pulpit, it muzzled the editor at his desk, 
and the professor in his lecture-room. It set a price 



48 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

upon the head of peaceful citizens, robbed the mails, and 
denounced the vital principle of the Declaration of In- 
dependence as treason. In States whose laws did not 
tolerate slavery, Slavery ruled the club and the drawing- 
room, the factory and the office, swaggered at the dinner- 
table, and scourged with scorn a cowardly society. It 
tore the golden rule from school-books, and from the 
prayer-book the pictured benignity of Christ. It prohib- 
ited, in the free States, schools for the hated race, and 
hunted women who taught children to read. It forbade a 
free people to communicate with their representatives, 
seized territory to extend its area and confirm its sov- 
ereignty, and plotted to steal more to make its empire 
impregnable and the free Republic of the United States 
impossible. Scholars, divines, men and women in every 
church, in every party, raised individual voices in earnest 
protest. They sighed against a hurricane. There had 
been such protest in the country for two centuries, — colo- 
nial provisions and restrictions, the fiery voice of Whit- 
field in the South, the calm persuasion of Woolman in 
the middle colonies, the heroism of Hopkins in Rhode 
Island, the eloquence of Rush in Pennsylvania. There 
had been Emancipation Societies at the North and at the 
South; arguments, and appeals, and threats in the Con- 
gress of the Confederation, in the Constitutional Con- 
vention, in the Congress of the Union ; there had been 
the words and the will of Washington, the warning of 
Jefferson, the consenting testimony of the revered fathers 
of the Government : always the national conscience some- 
where silently pleading, always the finger of the world 
steadily pointing in scorn. But here, after all the protest 



THE EULOGY. ID 

and the rebuke and the endeavor, was the malign power, 
which, when the Constitution was formed, had been but 
the shrinking Afrite bound in the casket, now towering 
and resistless. He had kicked his casket into the sea, 
and, haughtily defying the conscience of the country and 
the moral sentiment <>(* mankind, demanded absolute con- 
trol of the Republic as the price of union, — the Republic, 
anxious only to submit, and to call submission statesman- 
ship. 

If, then, the work of the Revolution was to be saved, 
and independent America was to become free America, 
the first and paramount necessity was to arouse the 
country. Agitation was the duty of the hour. Garrison 
was certainly not the first abolitionist ; no, nor was 
Luther the first Protestant. But Luther brought all the 
wandering and separate rays of protest to a focus, and 
kindled the contest for religious freedom. So, when 
Garrison Hung full in the face of Slavery the defiance of 
immediate and complete abolition, Slavery, instinctively 
foreseeing its doom, sprang to its feet, and joined, with 
the heroism of despair, in the death-grapple with Liberty, 
from which, after a generation, Liberty arose unbruised 
and victorious. It is hard for the survivors of a genera- 
tion to which Abolitionist was a word suggesting the 
most odious fanaticism — a furious declamation at once 
nonsensical and dangerous, a grotesque and sanctimonious 
playing with fire in a powder-magazine — to believe that 
the names of the two representative abolitionists will be 
written with a sunbeam, as Phillips say- of Toussaint, 
high over many an honored name. But history, looking 
before and after, readjusts contemporary judgments of 



50 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

men and events. In all the essential qualities of heroic 
action, Luther, nailing his challenge to the Church upon 
the church's own door, when the Church was supreme in 
Europe; William Tell, in the romantic legend, serenely 
scorning to bow to the cap of Gesler, when Gesler's 
troops held all the market-place, — are not nobler figures 
than Garrison and Phillips, in the hour of the complete pos- 
session of the country by the power of slavery, demand- 
ing immediate and unconditional emancipation. A tone 
of apology, of deprecation or regret, no more becomes an 
American in speaking of the abolitionists than in speak- 
ing of the Sons of Liberty in the Revolution, and every 
tribute of honor and respect which we gladly pay to the 
illustrious fathers of American independence is paid as 
worthily to their sons, the pioneers of American freedom. 
That freedom was secured, indeed, by the union of 
many forees. The abolition movement was moral agita- 
tion. It was a voiee crying in the wilderness. As an 
American movement it was reproached for holding aloof 
from the American political method. But in the order of 
time the moral awakening precedes political action. Poli- 
tics are founded in compromise and expediency, and had 
the abolition leaders paused to parley with prejudice and 
interest and personal ambition, in order to smooth and 
conciliate and persuade, their duty would have been 
undone. When the alarm-bell at night has brought the 
aroused citizens to the street, they will organize their 
action. But the ringer of the bell betrays his trust when 
he ceases to startle. To vote was to acknowledge the 
Constitution. To acknowledge the Constitution was to 
offer a premium upon slavery by granting more political 



THE EULOGY. 51 

power for every slave. It was to own an obligation to 
return innocenl men to unspeakable degradation, and to 
shoot them down if, with a thousandfold greater reason 
than our fathers, they resisted oppression. Could Ameri- 
cans do this? Could honest men do this? Could a great 
country do this, and not learn, sooner or later, by ghastly 
experience, the truth which George Mason proclaimed, — 
that Providence punishes national sins by national calami- 
ties? "The Union," said Wendell Phillips, with a calmness 
that enchanted while it appalled, — "the Union is called the 
very ark of the American covenant ; but has not idolatry 
of the Union been the chief bulwark of slavery, and in the 
words and deeds and spirit of the most vehement ' Union 
saviors' who denounce agitation can any hope of eman- 
cipation be descried? If, then, under the sacred charter 
of the Union, slavery has grown to this stupendous 
height, throwing the shadow of death over the land, is 
not the Union, as it exists, the foe of Liberty, and can we 
honestly affirm that it is the sole surviving hope of free- 
dom in the world? Long ago the great leaders of our 
parties hushed their voices, and whispered that even to 
speak of slavery waste endanger the Union. I> not this 
enough? Sons of Otis and of Adams, of Franklin and of 
Jay, are we ready for Union upon the ruins of freedom? 
Delenda Carthago! Delenda Carthago!" 

Even while he spoke there sprang up around him the 
marshalled host of an organized political party, which, 
raising the Constitution as a banner of freedom, marched 
to the polls to make 1 the Union the citadel of Liberty. 
He. indeed, had rejected the Constitution and the Union, 
as the bulwark of slavery. Hut he and the political host, 



52 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

widely differing, had yet a common purpose, and were 
confounded in a common condemnation. And who shall 
count the voters in that political army, and who the gen- 
erous heroes of the actual war, in whose young hearts his 
relentless denunciation of the Union had bred the high 
resolve that, under the protection of the Constitution, and 
by its own lawful power, the slave Union which he 
denounced should be dissolved in the fervid glory of a 
new Union of freedom? His plea, indeed, did not per- 
suade his friends, and was furiously spurned by his foes. 
"Hang Phillips and Yancey together; hang the aboli- 
tionist and the fire-eater, and Ave shall have peace," cried 
mingled wrath and terror, as the absorbing debate deep- 
ened toward civil war. But still, through the startling 
flash and over the thunder-peal with which the tempest 
burst, that cry rang out undismayed, Delenda Carthago ! 
The awful storm has rolled away. The warning voice 
is stilled forever. But the slave Union whose destruction 
he sought is dissolved, and the glorious Union of freedom 
and equal rights, which his soul desired, is the blessed 
Union of to-day. 

It is an idle speculation, fellow-citizens, to what or to 
whom chiefly belonged the glory of emancipation. It is 
like the earlier questions of the Revolution: Who first 
proposed the Committee on Correspondence? Who first 
hinted resistance? AVlio first spoke of possible indepen- 
dence? It is enough that there was a noble emulation of 
generous patriotism, and happy history forbears to decide. 
Doubtless the Minutemen fired the first organized shot 
of the Revolution. But it was Paul Revere, riding alone 
at midnight and arousing Middlesex, one hundred and 



THE EULOGY. 53 

nine years ago to-night, that brought the Massachusetts 
farmers to stand embattled on Lexington Green and Con- 
cord Bridge. 

For his great work of arousing the countr} and pierc- 
ing the national conscience Phillips was especially fitted, 
not only by the commanding will and genius of the 
orator, but by the profound sincerity of his faith in the 
people. The party leaders of his time had a qualified 
faith in the people. His was unqualified. To many of 
his fellow-citizens it seemed mad, quixotic, whimsical, or 
merely feigned. To some of them, even now, he appeal's 
to have been only an eloquent demagogue. But his life 
is the reply. To no act of his, to no private advantage 
sought or gained, to no use of his masterly power except 
to promote purposes which lie believed to be essential to 
the public welfare, could they ever point who charged him 
with base motives or personal ends. No man, indeed. 
can take a chief part in tumultuous national controversy 
without encountering misjudgment, and reproach, and 
unmeasured condemnation. But it does not affeel the 
lofty patriotism of the American Revolution that Adam 
Smith believed it to be stimulated by the vanity of 
colonial shopkeepers. It does not dim the lustre of the 
Methodist revival of religious sentiment in England that 
the bishops branded it as a vulgar and ignorant enthu- 
siasm. Wendell Phillips held, with John Bright, thai 
the first five hundred men who pass in the Strand would 
make as good a .Parliament as that which sits at St. 
Stephen's. A student of history, and a close observer 
of men, he rejected that fear of the multitude which 
springs from the feeding that the many are ignorant, while 



54 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the few are wise; and he believed the saying, too profound 
for Talleyrand, to whom it is ascribed, that everybody 
knows more than anybody. The great argument for 
popular government is not the essential righteousness of a 
majority, but the celestial law which subordinates the 
brute force of numbers to intellectual and moral ascen- 
dency, as the immeasurable floods of ocean follow the 
moon. Undisturbed by the most rancorous hostility, as 
in the meetings at the Music Hall in this city in the 
winter of secession, he looked calmly at the mob, and 
behind the drunken Philip he saw Philip the King. 

The huge wrongs and crimes in the annals of the 
race, the wars that have wasted the world and deso- 
lated mankind, he knew to be the work of the crowned 
and ruling minority, not of the mass of the people. 
The companion of his boyhood, and his college class- 
mate, Motley, with generous sympathy and vivid touch, 
that gave new beauty to the old heroic story, had shown 
that not from the palace of Charles the Fifth, not from 
luxurious Versailles, but from the huts of Dutch Island- 
ers, scattered along the hard coast of the ISTorth Sea, 
came the genius of Liberty to rescue modern Europe 
from hopeless despotism. Nay, with his own eyes, sad- 
dened and surprised, Phillips saw that, in the imme- 
diate presence of a monstrous and perilous wrong to 
human nature, prosperous and comfortable America 
angrily refused to hear; and that, while humanity lay 
bruised and bleeding by the way, the polished society 
of the most enlightened city in the Union passed by 
disdainful on the other side. 

But while he cherished this profound faith in the 



THE EULOGY. 55 

people, and because he cherished it, he never flattered 
the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to its 
passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exulting 
enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of bis regnant soul. 
Those who were eager to insult and deride and .silence 
him when he pleaded for the negro, wept and shouted 
and rapturously crowned him when he paid homage to 
O'Connell, and made O'Connell's cause his own. Bui 
the crowd did not follow him with huzzas. lie moved in 
solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech a light- 
ning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie, or 
an honored character, or a dogma of the parly creed, and 
the crowd burst into a furious tempesl of dissent, lie beat 
it into silence with uncompromising iteration. If it tried 
to drown his voice, be turned to the reporters, and over 
the raging tumult calmly said, w Howl on: I speak to 
thirty millions here! " 

There was another power in bis speech sharper than in 
the speech of any other American orator, — an unsparing 
invective. The abolition appeal was essentially iconoclas- 
tic, and the method of a reformer at close quarters with 
a mighty system of wrong cannot be measured by the 
standards of cool and polite debate. Phillips did nol 
shrink from the sternest denunciation, or ridicule, or scorn 
of those who seemed to him recreant to freedom and 
humanity, however enshrined they might be in public 
admiration, with whatever official dignity invested, with 
whatever softer graces of accomplishment endowed. The 
idols ' of a purely conventional virtue he delighted to 
shatter, because no public enemy seemed to him more 
deadly than the American who made moral cowardice 



o<> MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

respectable. He felt that the complacent conformity of 
Northern communities was the strength of slavery, and 
the man who would return a fugitive slave, or with all the 
resources of sophistry defend his return, upon a plea of 
Constitutional obligation, was, in his view, a man who 
would do an act of cruel wickedness to-day to avoid a 
vague and possible mischance hereafter. If the plea were 
sound in the case of one man; if one innocent man was 
to be an outcast from protecting laws, from effective sym- 
pathy, and from humanity, because he had been unspeak- 
ably wronged, — then it was as sound in the case of every 
such man, and the Union and the Constitution rested upon 
three million crimes. Was this endurable? Should an 
offence so inhuman as deliberate obedience to laws which 
compelled a man to do to another what he would not hesi- 
tate, amid the applause of all men, to kill that other for 
attempting to do to him, — should such an offence be 
condoned by courteous admonition and hesitating doubt? 
Should the partiality of friendship, should the learning, 
renown, or public service of the offender, save him from 
the pillory of public scorn? If Patrick Henry made the 
country ring with the name of the dishonest contractor in 
the war, should the name of the educated American who 
conspires with the slaveholders against the slave be too 
sacred for obloquy? No epithetis too blistering for John 
Brown, who takes his life in his hand that he may break 
the chain of the slave. Shall the gentleman whose com- 
pliance weakens the moral Gbre of New England, and 
fastens the slave's chain more hopelessly, go unwhipped 
of a single word of personal rebuke? Such questions he 
did not ask; hut they ask themselves, as to-day we turn 



TIIK EULOGY. .",7 

the pages that still quiver with his blasting words and 

recall the mortal strife in which he si I. Doubtless his 

friends, who knew that well-spring <>(* sweel waters, his 
heart, and who, like him, were sealed to the service of 
emancipation, sometimes grieved and recoiled amazed 
from his terrible arraignment. He knew the penalty of 
his course. He paid it cheerfully. Bui history will 
record that the orator who, in that supreme exigency of 
liberty, pitilessly whipped by name the aiders and abettors 
of the crime against humanity, made such complicity in- 
every intelligent community infinitely more arduous, and 
so served mankind, public virtue, and the State. 

But more than this. The avowed and open opponents 
of the anti-slavery agitation could not justly complain of 
his relentless pursuit. Prom them he received the blows 
that in turn he did not spare, lint others, his friends, 
soldiers of the same army, although in other divisions and 
upon a different route, marching against the same foe, — 
did they, too. feel those shafts of fire? How many a 
Massachusetts man, whose name the Commonwealth will 
canonize with his, loyal with his own fidelity to the 
common cause, he sometimes taunted as recreanl and 
scourged as laggard! How many leaders in other Slate-, 
statesmen beloved and revered, who, in other ways than 
his, fought the battle of liberty, with firmness in the right, 
as God gave them to see the right, and who live in 
national gratitude and among the great in histon for- 
evermore, did not those dauntless lip- seem sometimes 
cruelly to malign! w Blame not this plainness of speech," 
he said; "I have a hundred friends, as brave souls as God 
ever made, whose hearths are not as safe after honored 



58 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

men make such speeches." He knew that his ruth- 
less words closed to him homes of friendship and hearts 
of sympathy. He saw the amazement, he heard the con- 
demnation; but, like the great apostle preaching" Christ, 
he knew only humanity, and humanity crucified. Tongue 
of the dumb, eyes of the blind, feet of the lame, his voice 
alone, among the voices that were everywhere heard and 
heeded, was sent by God to challenge every word, or look, 
or deed that seemed to him possibly to palliate oppression 
or to comfort the oppressor. Divinely commissioned, he 
was not, indeed, to do injustice; but the human heart is 
very patient with the hero who, in his strenuous and sub- 
lime conflict, if sometimes he does not clearly see and 
sometimes harshly judges, yet, in all his unsparing assault, 
deals never a blow of malice, nor of envy, nor of personal 
gratification, — the warrior who grasps at no prizes for 
which others strive, and whose unselfish peace no laurels 
of Miltiades disturb. 

For a quarter of a century this was the career of 
"Wendell Phillips. His life had no events; his speeches 
were its only incidents. Xo public man could pass from 
us whose death, like his, would command universal 
attention, whose story would not display a splendid list 
of special achievements, of various official services, as 
of treaties skilfully negotiated, of legislative measures 
wisely adjusted, of imposing professional triumphs, of 
devoted party following, of an immense personal associa- 
tion, such as our ordinary political controversy and the 
leadership of genius and eloquence produce. But that 
official participation in political action and that peculiar 
personal contact with society were wanting in the life 



THE EULOGY. 59 

of Wendell Phillips. How strong, indeed, his moral 
ascendency over the public mind; how warm the ad- 
miration; how fond the affection in which, at a little 
distance, and as became the supreme reserve of his 

nature, he was held, let this scene, like thai of his burial, 
bear witness. But during the long- crusade of his life 
he was the most solitary of eminent American figures. 
In the general course of affairs he took little part. 
He had no share in the conduct of* the associations for 
every purpose, scientific, literary, charitable, moral, or 
other, with which every American community abounds. 
In ordinary society, at the club and the public dinner, 
at the as-embly and upon the ceremonial occasion, he 
was as unknown as in legislative halls or in public offices. 
Partly it was thai reserve, partly that method of his pub- 
lic speech, withheld him; partly he felt the air of social 
complaisance, like the compromising atmosphere of legis- 
latures, to be unfriendly to the spirit and objects of his 
life, and partly his liberal hand preferred to give where 
there could be no return. Vet, in the political arena, had 
he cared to engage, no man was more amply equipped 
than lie, by natural powers and taste and adaptation, 
by special study and familiarity with history and litera- 
ture, by exquisite tact and gay humor and abounding 
affability, by all the qualities that in public life make 
a great party leader, — a leader honored and beloved. 
And in that other circle, that "elevated sphere" in 
which Marie Antoinette appeared, "glittering like the 
morning-star, full of life and splendor and joy,*' that 
decorated world of social refinement into which he 
was born, there would have been no more fascinating 



60 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

or courtly figure, could he have forborne the call of 
conscience, the duty of his life. 

When the war ended, and the specific purpose of 
his relentless agitation was accomplished, Phillips was 
still in the prime of life. Had his mind recurred to 
the dreams of earlier years; had he desired, in the 
fulness of his fame and the maturity of his powers, to 
turn to the political career which the hojjes of the 
friends of his youth had forecast, — I do not doubt that 
the Massachusetts of Sumner and of Andrew, proud 
of his genius, and owning his immense service to the 
triumphant cause, — although a service beyond the party 
line, and often apparently directed against the party 
itself, — would have gladly summoned him to duty. 
It would, indeed, have been a kind of peerage for 
this great Commoner. But not to repose and peaceful 
honors did his earnest soul incline. "Xow that the 
field is won," he said gayly to a friend, " do you sit 
by the camp-fire, but I will put out into the under- 
brush." The slave, indeed, was free; but emancipation 
did not free the agitator from his task. The client that 
suddenly appeared before him on that memorable 
October day was not an oppressed race alone, — it 
was wronged Humanit}^; it was the victim of unjust 
systems and unequal laws; it was the poor man, the 
weak man, the unfortunate man, whoever and wherever 
he might be. This was the cause that he would still 
plead in the forum of public opinion. "Let it not be 
said," he wrote to a meeting of his old abolition com- 
rades, two months before his death, " that the old 
abolitionist stopped with the negro, and was never 



THE EULOGY. I'll 

able to see that the same principles claimed his utmost 
effort to protect all labor, white and black, and to 
further the discussion <>f every claim of humanity." 

Was this the habit of mere agitation, the restless dis- 
content that follows great achievement? There were 
those who thought so. But they were critics of a tem- 
perament which did not note that, with Phillips, agita- 
tion was a principle, and a deliberately chosen method to 
definite ends. There were still vast questions springing 
from the same root of selfishness and injustice as the 
question of slavery. They must force a hearing in the 
same way. He would not adopt in middle life the career 
of politics, which he had renounced in youth, however 
seductive that career might be, whatever its opportunities 
and rewards, because the purpose had grown with his 
growth and strengthened with his strength, to form public 
opinion rather than to represent it in making or in exe- 
cuting the laws. To form public opinion upon vital public 
questions by public discus-ion, — but by public discussion 
absolutely fearless and sincere, and conducted with honest 
faith in the people to whom the argument was addressed, 
— this was the chosen task of his life; this was the public 
service which be had long performed, and this he would 
still perform, and in the familiar way. 

His comprehensive philanthropy had made him, even 
during the anti-slavery contest, the untiring advocate of 
other great reforms. His powerful presentation of the 
justice and reason of the political equality of women, at 
Worcester, in L851, more than any other single impulse, 
launched that question upon the sea of popular contro- 
versy. In the general statement of principle nothing has 



62 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

been added to that discourse; in vivid and effective elo- 
quence of advocacy it has never been surpassed. All 
the arguments for independence echoed John Adams in 
the Continental Congress. All the pleas for applying the 
American principle of representation to the wives and 
mothers of American citizens echo the eloquence of 
Wendell Phillips at Worcester. His, also, was the voice 
that summoned the temperance voters of the Common- 
wealth to stand up and be counted; the voice which reso- 
lutely and definitely exposed the crime to which the busy 
American mind and conscience are at last turning, — the 
American crime against the Indians. Through him the 
sorrow of Crete, the tragedy of Ireland, pleaded with 
America. In the terrible experience of the early anti- 
slavery debate, when the Church and refined society 
seemed to be the rampart of Slavery, he had learned pro- 
found distrust of that conservatism of prosperity which 
chills human sympathy and narrows the conscience. So 
the vast combinations of capital in these later days, with 
their immense monopolies and imperial power, seemed to 
him sure to corrupt the government, and to obstruct and 
threaten the real welfare of the people. He felt, there- 
fore, that what is called the respectable class is often 
really — but unconsciously and with a generous purpose, 
not justly estimating its own tendency — the dangerous 
class. He was not a party politician; he cared little for 
parties or for party leaders. But any political party 
which, in his judgment, represented the dangerous ten- 
dency was a party to be defeated in the interest of the 
peace and progress of all the people. 

But his judgment, always profoundly sincere, was it 



THE EULOGY. 63 

not sometimes profoundly mistaken? N<> nobler friend 
of freedom and of man than Wendell Phillips ever 
breathed upon this continent, and no man's service to 
freedom surpasses his. But before the war he demanded 
peaceful disunion; yet it was the Union in arms that 
saved liberty. During the war he would have superseded 
Lincoln; but it was Lincoln who freed the slaves. He 
pleaded for Ireland, tortured by centuries of misrule; 
and while every generous heart followed with sympathy 
the pathos and the power of his appeal, the jusl mind 
recoiled from the sharp arraignment of the truest friends 
in England that Ireland ever had. I know it all: luit I 
know also, and history will remember, thai the slave 
Union which he denounced is dissolved; that it was the 
heart and conscience of the nation, exalted by his moral 
appeal of agitation, as well as by the enthusiasm of 
patriotic war, which held up the hands of Lincoln, and 
upon which Lincoln leaned in emancipating the slaves; 
and that only by indignant and aggressive appeals like 
his has the heart of England ever opened to Irish 
wrong. 

No man, I say, can take a preeminent and effective 
part in contentions that shake nations, or in the discussion 
of great national policies, of foreign relations, of domestic 
economy and finance, without keen reproach and fierce 
misconception. "But death," says Bacon, K bringeth 
good fame." Then, if moral integrity remain unsoiled, 
the purpose pure, blameless the life, and patriotism, as 
shining as the sun, conflicting views and differing coun- 
sels disappear, and, firmly fixed upon character and 
actual achievement, good fame rests secure. Eighty 



64 MEMORIAL OP WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

years ago, in this city, how unsparing was the denuncia- 
tion of John Adams for betraying and ruining his party; 
for his dogmatism, his vanity, and ambition; for his 
exasperating impracticability, — he, the Colossus of the 
Revolution! And Thomas Jefferson, — I may truly say 
what the historian says of the Saracen mothers and 
Richard Coeur de Leon, that the mothers of Boston 
hushed their children with fear of the political devil 
incarnate of Virginia. But when the drapery of mourn- 
ing shrouded the columns and overhung the arches of 
Faneuil Hall, Daniel Webster did not remember that 
sometimes John Adams was imprudent, and Thomas 
Jefferson sometimes unwise. He remembered only that 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were two of the 
greatest of American patriots, and their fellow-citizens 
of every party bowed their heads and said. Amen! I am 
not here to declare that the judgment of Wendell Phil- 
lips was always sound, nor his estimate of men always 
just, nor his policy always approved by the event. He 
would have scorned such praise. I am not here to 
eulogize the mortal, but the immortal. He, too, was a 
great American patriot; and no American life — no, not 
one — offers to future generations of his countrymen a 
more priceless example of inflexible fidelity to conscience 
and to public duly; and no American more truly than he 
purged the national name of its shame, and made the 
American flag the flag of hope for mankind. 

Among her noblest children his native city will cherish 
him, and gratefully recall the unbending Puritan soul 
that dwelt in a form so gracious and urbane. The plain 
house in which lie lived, — severely plain, because the 



THE EULOGY . 65 

welfare of the suffering and the slave were preferred to 
book and picture, and every fair device of art, — the house 
to which the iNorth Star led the trembling fugitive, and 
which the unfortunate and the friendless knew; the 
radiant figure passing swiftly through these streets, plain 
as the house from which it came, regal with a royalty 
beyond that of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the 
strong, sustaining heart of private friendship; the sacred 
domestic affection that must not here be named; the 
eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from 
living memory into a doubtful tale; that great scene of his 
youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the 
mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his 
name is forever blended; the consecration of a life hidden 
with God in sympathy with man, — these, all these, will 
live among your immortal traditions, heroic even in your 
heroic story. But not yours alone. As year- go by, and 
only the large outlines of lofty American characters and 
careers remain, the wide republic will confess the bene- 
diction of a life like this, and gladly own that if, with per- 
fect faith, and hope assured, America would still stand 
and "bid the distant generations hail," the inspiration 
of her national life must be the sublime moral courage, 
the all-embracing humanity, the spotless integrity, the 
absolutely unselfish devotion of great powers t<> great 
public ends, which were the glory of Wendell Phillips. 



FINAL PROCEEDINGS. 



FINAL PROCEEDINGS. 



At a meeting of the Board of Aldermen, held on the twenty- 
first of April, 1884, Alderman Charles II. Hersey offered the 
following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted: — 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- 
pressed to George William Curtis for his exceed- 
ingly able and interesting address on the life and 
character of Wendell Phillips, delivered before the 
City Council, the 18th inst, and that Mr. Curtis be re- 
quested to furnish a copy of his address for publication. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- 
pressed to the trustees of Tremont Temple for their 
courtesy in allowing the city the free use of their hall, the 
18th inst., upon the occasion of the memorial services in 
honor of Wendell Phillips. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- 
pressed to Mrs. Mary E. Blake for the beautiful and 
appropriate poem composed by her, at the City's request, 
for the memorial services, on the L8th inst., in honor of 
Wendell Phillips. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- 
pressed to Miss Belle Cushman Eaton for the grace- 
ful and acceptable manner in which she tilled the position 

(69) 



70 MEMORIAL OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of reader, the 18th inst., upon the occasion of the memo- 
rial services in honor of Wendell Phillips. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council arc due 
to the ladies and gentlemen who so acceptably performed 
the musical portion, of the memorial services, on the 18th 
inst., in honor of Wendell Phillips. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be ex- 
pressed to Rev. M. J. Savage for performing the duties 
of chaplain at the memorial services, on the 18th inst., in 
honor of Wendell Phillips; and also for his appropri- 
ate poetical contributions, which added to the interest of 
the occasion. 

The Common Council, on the twenty-fourth of April, concurred 
in the passage of the resolutions, and they were approved by the 
Mayor, April 28,' 1884. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ■ 



: ^ 


&dv 




.'X- 5 ..'■"> 


;- : '-. ; -'-'i. 






T ,^ 




- ,c 




" 


^ N >! 


? v 








